Lambeth Palace The Hairy Builder

Want to know about British history? You'd better get your hands dirty.

Don't bury your head in a guidebook.

Ask a brickie,

a chippy,

or a roofer.

Ever since I were a boy, I've had a passion for our past so...

I'm going to apprentice myself to the oldest masonry

company in the country,

mastering their crafts

and scraping away the secrets of Blighty's poshest piles.

From castles to cathedrals,

music halls to mansions,

palaces to public schools.

These aren't just buildings,

they're keys to opening up our past and bringing it back to life.

Today, I'm at Lambeth Palace, South London,

the Archbishop's HQ in the nation's capital.

'I'll be discovering the human side of our greatest kings and queens.'

Richard III's put his own birthday.

Who hasn't done that on a calendar at home,

just to remind the others when's his birthday?

'Indulging in some Thameside time travel,

'courtesy of the local mudlarkers.'

I always quite liked this little item.

This is like the top of a sceptre, but this was found near to here.

-It's got some age to it, hasn't it?

-Yeah.

'And preparing for a very special topping out ceremony.'

It's going to look brilliant, isn't it?

-It really is the icing on the cake.

-Yeah, the crowning glory, yeah.

Lambeth is a bustling borough of South Central London,

packed with over a quarter of a million people.

But back in the 13th century, when today's building was constructed,

this whole area would have been marshland

and it's even got its own theme tune.

If you're doing the Lambeth walk,

you might as well be doing it with a lamb.

Hey-hey! Ain't no point in being sheepish.

This famous South London borough is named after this

woolly fellow's ancestors.

They were brought here from local farms.

These days, Lambeth's a bit light on livestock.

You're more likely to find commuters, tourists,

and maybe the odd archbishop.

Baa!

By the end of the 12th century,

Westminster had become England's seat of government,

so the Archbishop of Canterbury,

the Pope's representative in Blighty, decided to build a

residence a bit closer to the action,

on the other side of the Thames.

And so, Lambeth Palace was born.

A Great Hall was built alongside the Palace to entertain

the great and the good, and it's this building that's just reached

the end of a long-overdue makeover.

Most builders have to deal with subsidence and rising damp,

but with Lambeth Palace, it's a bit more of a challenge.

The Palace's Great Hall has been through the wars, literally.

It was completely destroyed during the English Civil War

of the 1640s and rebuilt, as you see it today, in the 1660s.

Hitler also had a good go at flattening it in World War II.

For the last year, the guys at restoration company William Anelay

have been working on returning the Great Hall to its former glory.

-Hello, Chris.

-How are you doing, Dave?

Do you know that this room, this building, it is breathtaking.

Yeah, absolutely beautiful.

It's awesome in the proper sense of the word.

I mean, the history that's occurred in this hall,

every British monarch will have been in here.

The history it's witnessed.

As a builder, how does that make you feel?

Henry VIII has dined in here.

And I'm working here now.

It's like, it humbles you almost.

It's a buzz, isn't it? It's a buzz.

And have you been getting to meet the Archbishop of Canterbury

-on a daily basis?

-Yeah, you see him every now and then.

He's a really down-to-earth, friendly kind of guy, really.

How much have you had to do here? Because it looks perfect,

but it looks as though there's nothing been done.

-Oh, yeah, that's the secret, really.

-Aye.

-If you're careful,

nobody can tell you've done anything,

then you've done a good job.

I think, well, basically,

the bookcases have been extended by a couple of inches.

It was painstaking. They've had these extension pieces fitted in.

It's to help with the ventilation for the books, do you know,

-so they don't go mouldy.

-Yes.

-So you've got like a backdraught, literally.

-Yeah, yeah.

The attention to detail's phenomenal.

-What else have you done here, Chris?

-We ripped the floor up.

-It had a cork-lined floor.

-No!

-Yeah, two layers of it.

-I had a flat like that once.

-Yeah. Yeah, it's like the '70s touch.

Yes. But this is the most perfect floor.

-And this is how it would have been.

-Yes, yeah.

After a two-month process, using marble imported from Italy,

the floor of the Great Hall is ready to be walked all over

by kings, queens and popes once again.

Work on the Great Hall has

taken 15 highly skilled craftsmen

48 weeks and cost £1.2 million,

and it's no mean feat.

650 tiles had to be used,

but if you're going to do a job,

you're best to do it properly.

I wonder how long it is

since anybody can remember this floor being like this.

-I don't think they'll be alive.

-No. It is the most incredible job.

So you're not free to do my kitchen, are you?

No, I wouldn't have thought so. I don't think you could afford us.

No, I think you're probably right, actually.

It's even got underfloor heating.

It'll create an even temperature for the books

-because some of the books are really ancient.

-Isn't that fantastic?

Not only have we got the floor back to how it would have been,

how it was intended, it's actually fit for purpose in the 21st century.

And will help to preserve the books.

I love that level of restoration where you can't tell anything's

been done and especially as, you know, it got flattened

in the English Civil War and then it got bombed in the Second World War.

-Yeah, straight through there.

-Really?

-That panel.

-An incendiary bomb.

-HE EXHALES LOUDLY

And was there a lot of damage?

There was a fair bit of damage, yeah.

-You can imagine, flames and books and wooden bookcases.

-Yeah.

-Did you do much to the ceiling?

-Just a clean, really.

We cleaned off 300 years' worth of dust.

When I went up there, you could still see the char marks

-on the back of the timbers from the fire.

-The incendiaries.

Yes, and then a final, just a construction clean at the end.

-So we didn't leave our mucky paw prints.

-It's wonderful.

The Great Hall is just one of the buildings in

the Lambeth Palace complex.

The oldest part is this 12th-century crypt chapel which was also

used as a bomb shelter for the locals in World War II.

This guardroom was added in the 14th century.

The impressive Morton's Tower gatehouse was added by the Tudors,

and this block, containing the

Archbishop's official living quarters,

was built in Gothic style in the 1820s.

This is where many of the impressive staterooms

can still be seen to this day.

The Palace has played a crucial role in English and world history.

Every British monarch has visited the place

and Queen Victoria loved it here.

Here's her favourite crockery.

These plush boudoirs still entertain the heads of state

and religion from all over the world.

The inside of the palace is pretty spectacular, and do you know what?

The outside ain't bad either. Alan Titchmarsh, eat your heart out.

Hello, Declan.

Lovely to meet you, Dave.

Welcome to the Archbishop's back garden.

It's a really wonderful calm oasis in this busy city.

It's actually the second biggest private garden in London

-after Buckingham Palace.

-Good grief.

Do you know, the amount of times I've ridden my motorbike

down that road, I didn't dream this garden was here.

It's been very closed-in and secret but it's getting less so.

We're opening it up. We are hoping, really, it's going

to be much less of a secret than in the past.

Well, I bet there's a lot of secrets in those four walls.

Well, there are. I think if you come round to the library and archive,

-we'll have a look at them.

-Thank you.

The library was established in 1610.

When Peter the Great visited a few decades later,

he couldn't believe there were so many books in the whole world.

The library has thousands of private letters,

manuscripts and over a quarter of a million printed books,

many from the private collections of archbishops, kings, queens,

scholars and statesmen.

I've got some things out from the collection to show you,

-if you're interested.

-Oh, gosh, yes.

And I thought we'd run through the centuries quickly.

-And we start with this, which is the prayer book of Richard III.

-No!

So, when Richard was at the Battle of Bosworth in the 1480s,

it's reputed that he had his prayer book with him.

So, regardless of what people think of Richard III,

clearly a devout man, and this is his own personal prayer book.

And in the front is a calendar

and handwritten by Richard III,

is, he's put his own birthday on the calendar.

Richard III has put his own birthday.

Who hasn't done that on a calendar at home?

Just to remind the others when's my birthday.

But it is mind-blowing.

And we move on now to the 1500s.

And Henry VIII is trying to divorce his first wife,

Catherine of Aragon, and Catherine of Aragon's chaplain,

Thomas Abel, writes a book arguing that the king can't divorce.

This is Henry VIII's copy.

He's clearly read it and studied it

and the annotation there in the margins you can see is

Henry VIII's handwritten annotation where he's disagreeing because he is

so closely related, it makes the marriage null.

He's almost arguing that he's married to his sister,

although it was his sister-in-law,

because he married the widow of his brother.

And, of course, because he wanted the marriage to

-Catherine of Aragon to end so he could marry Anne Boleyn.

-Absolutely.

This is the most incredible archive and collection!

What else do you have in here, Declan?

As you go on through the centuries, we start to get more

and more of the archbishops' own papers and archives,

sometimes very personal items

-and that's the last thing I've got out for you.

-Gosh.

I must say, the first time I ever read this,

this brought tears to my eyes. This is from the 1920s.

It's a letter from Prince Albert Duke of York,

who later became George VI.

He's just married Elizabeth Bowes-Lyon,

and here's this marvellous letter he writes from his honeymoon

-in Polesden Lacey in Dorking.

-Oh, good grief.

This is George VI, the husband of the Queen Mother, on his honeymoon,

-writing this to the archbishop who's just married them.

-Yeah.

"My dear Archbishop, I should have written to you before this to

"thank you for my wife and myself, for your great

"kindness in performing the ceremony of our wedding last Thursday.

"I hope you did not think that we were too nervous,

"but we were soon reassured by your kindly words

"which gave us much confidence.

"Again, thanking you, I remain,

"Yours very sincerely, Albert."

-What a wonderful letter.

-It's marvellous.

-It is lovely, isn't it?

-Very human and heart-warming.

-Yeah.

These are such personal links with the building, with the past.

History comes alive here, doesn't it?

Aye, it's fantastic, Declan, thank you so much.

It's incredible to be able to see such a priceless collection

of artefacts from our kings and queens first-hand.

And just a few metres away from the archive,

a team of highly-skilled craftsmen have been working on the exterior

of the Great Hall, getting rid of 350 years of grime and grease.

As you can see round here,

you had like a carbon build-up,

-this is from the traffic.

-What, that?

-Yeah.

-Like crust?

It's a crust, yeah.

It's basically exhaust fumes and the Industrial Revolution,

it caked everything.

So this, which is beautiful, and kind of stone-coloured,

-was that the same colour as that?

-Yes, black bright.

-If you step back, you can see where the carvings are.

-Yes.

And that's all been cleaned, to brand-new.

Scaffolding was erected 30 metres to the top of the building,

and craftsmen painstakingly sandblasted the stone work clean,

restored these ornamental drain covers...

..and gave the place the best clean it's had in centuries.

It's beautiful and white.

Do you know, it's hard to envisage what it was like

when it was completely black like that.

I bet the Archbishop didn't know what his house looked like.

It does look absolutely beautiful now.

It really sets the building off now, gleaming white in the sunshine.

You can see it from over the river and it really stands out.

Was all the detail lost

in the sculptures?

Well, a lot of it, yeah, was masked because it was such

a build-up on round the faces

-and it was just sort of...

-Muck.

-..muck, yeah.

Aye. Look at that. It's so pertinent. 1663.

Just three years before The Great Fire of London.

And still surviving.

Aye, well, can you imagine building this in 1663,

then the whole lot gets burnt down. You'd be sick as a parrot.

-I know, yeah.

-That's proper history. It's lovely.

-Hm, yeah.

To see how to spring-clean some stone first-hand,

I went up to Yorkshire to the Anelay's masonry workshop.

This is more for someone's back garden,

rather than the Archbishop, but you get the idea.

-How do, Chris?

-All right?

-Yeah, not bad. Not bad.

-All right.

Do you know, it's interesting, just down at Lambeth, you know,

they've been getting like 350 years of smog, muck and grime off,

but it's like so precious.

How do you set about cleaning stonework without wrecking it?

You just clean it up using these carbide stones.

They come in a lot harder grades. I mean, that's even harder.

Yeah, that's rougher, yeah, yeah.

So you've really got to give it some as well sometimes,

-but try and be as careful as you can.

-Can I have a go?

-Yeah, if you like, yeah.

-Which one there?

Start off with that one, it's rougher,

try and get some of this muck off.

Carbide blocks are a mixture of sand and carbon and are perfect

for polishing the delicate masonry like statues and historic stonework.

You can't just turn on the jet wash, or you'll do some serious damage.

It's amazing how tough the dirt is,

you know, like washing it in soapy water

-is not going to do it, is it?

-No, no, that doesn't normally help.

You've really got to give it a bit of elbow grease.

I suppose, you know, it's a

fine line between kind of making something look as good as new

or overdoing it, and destroying what could be a very valuable statue.

Yeah, that's why we've got to be so careful with it

and that's why we have the smaller tools.

I mean, I've got an old toothbrush just to get in the little nooks

and crannies and we've just really got to be as careful as we can.

It is amazing, with all the technology we've got today,

we end up using a sponge, a toothbrush and an old rubbing stone.

Yeah, stick to what we know best.

The bare bones of it all, we still work how they did

all them years ago.

That's what we try to do.

Well, let's see what that looks like now.

-See how you are starting to get rid of it all now?

-Yeah.

Compared to how down there, how dirty it is there.

Black, isn't it? It's incredible when you

think of the stonework at Lambeth, the extent of it, the work involved!

-It's quite nice, isn't it?

-Oh, it's beautiful now.

It certainly is.

The guys' hard work, along with plenty of sandblasting,

has made the outside of the Great Hall come up a treat.

Inside the Great Hall,

the restoration experts worked long and hard,

fixing up the skirting boards of the historic bookcases,

but doing it so you can't tell the old from the new

was no mean feat.

So it's back to basics with a hammer and chisel.

You just take little bits off at a time.

I think the key is not to take too much off at once.

For me, it's not just a job.

I actually enjoy doing it

and getting to work

in places such as Lambeth Palace.

You look at the bookshelves and the roof in here,

and you think of the men that worked on these jobs originally

and you think, "Well, I've got to match their standard."

Do you know what I mean?

Otherwise, you're sort of depriving the next generation of its history.

I do like a man who takes pride in his work.

You can roughly see now it's roughly taking shape, isn't it?

I'll carry on at that.

It's great to think that I'm just a humble chippy from Yorkshire

and I've ended up working in the same place

that kings and queens have walked through.

Beats being on a normal housing site.

And you get to do beauty stuff like this in a beauty environment.

Aye, it's sort of taking shape now.

You can see it's roughly getting there.

Time to put this master craftsman to the test.

Yeah, here's one we've made earlier.

That's one that, these had a door and a frame in originally.

But as that's come out, we've had to try

and replicate all this pattern, and hopefully,

when I've done, this is what this will look like.

So that's the finished product. And that's where I am now.

Seven years of bad luck. Good job I'm not superstitious.

If these walls could talk,

they would tell the story of the past eight centuries,

but the murky waters of the Thames,

they've also got a lot of secrets to spill.

Without the river, there'd be no London.

And for centuries, there was just one bridge spanning the Thames.

I'm off to meet London historian Loona Hazarika

to find out more.

So, Loona, when did we get bridges over the Thames?

The first bridge dates from Roman times.

They would have built it in the city of London,

further downstream over there.

It took 1,700 years for us to get our next bridge

-and it was that one over there, it was Westminster Bridge.

-Right!

And then during Victorian times,

there was a huge spurt in bridge building.

Today, we have 33 bridges in London.

So, when there was only two,

that must have been a field day for the boatmen.

They absolutely loved it.

They, in fact, vetoed much of the bridge building in the 1600s

because they made a lot of money

from actually ferrying people to and fro.

They were hugely influential, these people.

-They had a bit of swagger and bravado about them.

-Right.

Notoriously foul-mouthed as well. They were full of expletives.

It was called water language. They were a law unto themselves.

On land, if you spoke badly about the king,

you would probably get charged with treason.

-But they could do that and just get away with it.

-Wow.

George I, on his royal processional barge,

had Handel's Water Music being played,

and people say it was played extra loud just to stop the profanities.

-Oh, no!

-They were all shouting and swearing at him and they're saying

"Play it louder, play it louder."

-"He can hear them, he can hear them!"

-Yeah.

So this really is an incredibly important stretch of river.

Absolutely. If you just take a look out here,

what is connecting to what, by this stretch of the river.

You've got the Palace of the Archbishop of Canterbury

over there. Opposite, you can see Westminster Abbey,

the Palace of Westminster, the Houses of Parliament,

and then if you look further down there, it would

have been the Palace of Whitehall.

It burned down in the 1600s, unfortunately.

But those palaces would have all

been connected by this stretch of water.

You can imagine in that time, all the great movers and shakers

of the age would have been coming to and fro across this river.

Queen Elizabeth, Henry VIII, the Archbishop of Canterbury,

you can imagine all the stuff they dropped in.

You know, there's bound to be some of them are clumsy.

This stretch of the Thames

is a veritable treasure trove of things thrown overboard,

and the perfect stomping ground for mudlarkers.

Mudlarking began as a profession in the late 18th century,

and was the name given to people, mainly women and children,

who would earn a few pennies scavenging

for things on the river bank to sell.

'Professional mudlarker Steve Brooker

'knows all the secrets of the deep.'

How do, Steve.

-So where do we start, Steve?

-I was just looking for that erosion

that's just happened on the last tide,

which is a tiny piece of mud

has just been washed off,

and you can see something.

I'm liking this due to the fact that, very clean...

-Yeah, shows erosion.

-Yeah, look at the amount of pipes that are here.

-Yeah, pipe stems.

-Look! There is a clear pipe stem.

-Well done.

You've got another one there.

There's loads of clay pipes around, Steve.

If you look at the size of that one there, that's 1800s,

when, all of a sudden, tobacco is really cheap.

Kids are smoking, older women are smoking, everybody is smoking.

-And hence all these pipes around.

-Yeah.

Let's have a quick look and see what else we can see.

'And in case you're wondering,

'you need a special licence to mudlark these days.

'After all, there's plenty of stuff of historic importance.'

Even modern history as well. Do you remember those as a kid?

Oh, gosh, yes. But I don't think I'm that old.

There's still something in there.

-I think that's Thames cola.

-That is Thames cola.

I don't think that's the real thing.

THEY LAUGH Hey! Love it!

-Are we taking this?

-Yeah, go on. Bung it in.

Steve has been mudlarking for 26 years

and in that time has found all manner of treasures

which have been perfectly preserved in the anaerobic mud,

basically, mud that doesn't let the air in.

So, what's some of the best things that you've found, Steve?

Because we're near Lambeth Palace over here,

I always quite like this little item.

This is like the top of a sceptre, but this was found near to here.

-It's got some age to it, hasn't it?

-Yeah.

That would be fantastic to know the story behind it,

but we're never ever going to know.

This is some of my favourite bits and pieces.

-So this is a 14th-century merchant's ring.

-14th century?

-Can you imagine somebody wearing that? 800 years ago.

-Hm.

-That is an amazing thing.

-Yeah, it's a good little find.

-And these things, I always like. We have quite a few of these.

-Wow.

So, can you have a guess what it is?

-It's the bottom of your scabbard for your sword.

-Course it is, yeah.

If I was sticking a sharp sword in all the time, into leather,

it's going to poke through the bottom.

The condition of it's perfect, isn't it?

Yeah, because it's that anaerobic mud again.

-Remember, if it stays in the mud, it looks pristine.

-How old is this?

-That's about 1480.

-No!

-That mud protects it.

The history of the Thames, the history of Lambeth Palace,

it's all here, isn't it? It's just lying here on the foreshore.

-Yeah, and it's just having a keen eye to finding it.

-Yeah.

But I do love it when we have somebody new down here and

they too pick up bits and pieces and,

you know, it does, it just changes history.

And one place that presided over one of the biggest changes

in English history,

the establishment of an independent Church of England,

was Lambeth Palace.

When Henry VIII demanded a divorce from the Pope but was refused,

it led to what is known as the Reformation,

when the Church of England split from Rome,

and Lambeth was Catholic no more.

Lambeth didn't just revolutionise religious history.

It's been at the hub of social change, and the evidence is

painted on the bricks of buildings across the borough.

It's renowned for its radical history and was vilified as London's

loony left central, back in the '70s and '80s.

It's also one of the most multicultural places in Britain,

something celebrated in murals and artwork across the borough.

This mural is known as Children At Play,

or for many people, it's the one on the Brixton Academy, and it was

created in 1982 by an artist called Stephen Pusey.

A lot of the funding for community murals

and community arts were focused on deprived areas, places where

they felt that bringing the community together was important.

It was painted just after the riots that happened in Brixton in 1981.

And there was a suggestion that maybe

he should paint something related to the riots,

but Stephen didn't feel this was the right thing

for local people to have to look at.

So, instead, he did a wonderful scene of children playing together

which is something he saw in the local schools.

This particular mural sort of celebrates

the diversity in Lambeth,

and Lambeth is still a very diverse area.

One of Lambeth's best-known murals

is an explosive plea to ban the bomb.

In 1980, when I was painting the mural, there was

a great feeling that nuclear war might happen.

The Russians and the Americans had, you know,

equal number of weapons and the Tories decided that they

would help America, and put cruise missiles on Greenham Common.

So that made Great Britain a target.

That's why I developed a giant skeleton

marching across London

with nuclear bombs going off.

I had Margaret Thatcher, Prince Charles,

the police superintendent of Brixton all cowering in a bunker

underneath the Houses of Parliament.

It's gone now, it's got graffiti over it,

but I hope to paint it back some time soon.

Lambeth's residents are rightly proud of their artistic

and radical heritage and especially of the borough's very own palace,

which has finally been restored to look better than ever.

Foreman Chris is preparing for a very special topping out ceremony.

The 17th-century weather vane is

going back in pride of place on top of the Great Hall.

Wow! You see them on the top of the building

-and it's a speck in the distance.

-Yeah.

-It's massive.

-Yeah.

-Is that gold?

-Yeah, it's about 32 pounds of 24-carat gold leaf.

Blooming heck. And of course, the gold leaf,

that's going to last better than paint, isn't it?

-Yeah, definitely, yeah.

-Wow.

-Years and years and years.

-It is about 350 years old.

-So is that the original weather vane?

Yeah, it got damaged in the war, so it's had some repairs in the '50s

to keep it all together, but the actual main body of it is original.

-This is fantastic, isn't it?

-Uh-huh.

-And is it to sit on top of the lantern?

-Yeah.

The spike right at the top,

obviously that drops on and it caps off with this mitre...

-Oh, it's a bishop's hat, isn't it?

-Yeah.

-It's only just twigged.

So why do we have two?

Well, this is a brand-new one because this one,

this original, 350 years old, but as you can see,

it's deteriorated quite badly inside.

-Aye, I mean, this one has seen better days, hasn't it?

-Hm.

So this is a brand-new one. It's exactly the same size.

Yeah, a replica.

Hopefully, this one will last another 350 years, though.

Is this made from copper as well?

Yeah, copper, and then, obviously,

gold leafed over the top for added protection.

It's going to look brilliant, isn't it?

-It really is the icing on the cake.

-Yeah, the crowning glory, yeah.

So, after almost a year of painstaking work,

the Great Hall has been restored to look better than ever.

I think this calls for a bit of pomp and pageantry.

TRUMPET FANFARE

Lambeth Palace is a truly magnificent medieval building

which played a crucial role in British history.

But it is only by getting to grips with the nitty-gritty details

that you can bring the building back to life.

And the best way to do that is by getting to know your builders.

MUSIC: Zadok The Priest by George Frideric Handel

Lambeth Palace, it's such a familiar landmark in London,

but beyond those gates, there lies a secret garden,

and in those rooms there's lots of secrets.

It really is a hugely important piece of British history.

I mean, Henry VIII's books, Richard III's books, it's incredible.

It's a wonderful building. And now it's looking fantastic.

'Next time, I'm in Manchester,

'helping to restore the magnificent cathedral...'

You're doing me out of a job.

'Finding out the origins of a very famous secret agent...'

A note, another note, for your eyes only,

and the old long division sign for the seven.

So he was 007.

'And trying to bribe the builders.'

I'll swap you my mother's Yorkshire pudding recipe for that.

It's worth it.